With a looming budget crisis, the city council is looking high and low for places to make budget cuts.

One budget cut, which is apparently making the rounds at city hall, is to send the eight horses used by the Seattle Police Department’s to the glue factory.

The city spends about $100,000 a year to house and maintain the horses at a facility near Westcrest Park in West Seattle. If the city were to cut the mounted patrols, officers in the unit would be reassigned to other duties.

According to an emailed statement from Seattle Police Department spokeswoman Renee Witt, the mounted unit is "an integral part of the department":

The mounted unit is a working unit that is utilized everyday. In addition to parades, crowd control, community function events etc..

There are no plans to downsize the mounted unit.

While business owners and residents in the downtown core have been pleading with the city to increase the police presence, not everyone’s a fan of the mounted units.

“I think [the mounted patrols] are a double-edged sword,” says Nick Wells, Executive Director of the Pioneer Square Community Association. “They certainly fit the historic character of the neighborhood. But there’s an issue with waste. When a horse uses the bathroom, it’s not a small pile.”

Wells says the mounted units have turned Pioneer Square into a bit of a minefield and that he’d prefer to see more bike patrols in the area. "It’s interesting," Wells says. "The horse drawn carriages have bags that catch [horseshit] and SPD doesn’t. I had a very close call stepping into a large pile a few days ago.” he says.

Cutting SPD's mounted unit wouldn't come close to fixing a projected $30 million shortfall, but every little cut counts, at least until the economy is more stable.

Photo by Jason Anfinsen via Flickr.